Objects at Rest
by euchrid eucrow
Summary: “He likes to surround himself with imperfection. There's something intrinsically intriguing about the damaged, the incomplete and broken.” Spoilers for Honeymoon and the unaired sides.
1. 1

Title: Objects at Rest  
By: lot49  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: House is the property of Fox, don't own the characters, blah, blah, blah.  
Summary: Spoilers for _Honeymoon_ and the unaired sides.

* * *

He likes to surround himself with imperfection; there's something intrinsically intriguing about the damaged, the incomplete and broken. The human body is his alchemy; the art of destruction, diagnosis, and rebuilding. He crafts his solutions from a series of symptoms, reconstructing puzzles from their missing pieces. 

It seems, though, he's been stuck at the first stage, forever. 

Miles of wasteland stretch under his itching skin, with dusty _Keep Out_ signs posted at every juncture. At night he sleeps under a blanket of hydrocodone. 

It's why people can't be around him. Why she can't. 

_You were the one. You always will be. But I can't be with you._

Ah, but Stacy always knew where to hit to hurt the most. He still feels the sting of her lips on his skin, her words lashing the inside of his skull. 

(Cameron, blinking back tears, telling him something or another about love, about him, her, but he wasn't really listening.) 

He rubs his palm against his forehead, trying to scrape images of the two from his brain. 

Both of them, talking. Always talking. And he's sick of listening. To nuns, and jazz musicians and pre-school teachers, to everyone who thinks they know. Sick of being dissected. No one ever says it, but they all look; they don't point, but they might as well; and they think it's all about the leg. The leg and the Vicodin. 

It's what everyone sees when they see Dr. Gregory House. What he sees every morning in the mirror. In the reflections of his patients, the staff, and ghosts of himself in glass-lined hallways of Princeton Plainsboro's Teaching Hospital. 

The years have failed to mellow out his disposition. In fact, it's made him crankier, even more unpleasant. 

("In an attic somewhere," Wilson once surmised, "there's a portrait of you that's getting increasingly nicer.") 

Which, he supposes, fits in a way. After all, there's an art to being an asshole. 

Pain is his only constant. It's reliable. Familiar; the deep, unyielding burn of his fucked-up leg. A few chalky pills and he doesn't feel more than a muted twinge there, doesn't have to contemplate the churning ulcers in his stomach or the havoc the combination of acetaminophen and liquor are causing in his liver. 

People lie, but in pain we trust. 

In cane we... 

He tosses it, an underhand throw, into the leather-upholstered arms of his couch. Turns and stands with his weight carefully distributed between his legs. A deep breath and he focuses. Everything. All his energy on that spot in front of him, on the things normal, whole people take for granted. Like walking. One step. Be normal. Promise to be...well...tolerable. Yeah. Tolerable. Be tolerable, not nice, he'll never be nice (not like her chump of a husband). But. Maybe she'll see. Maybe she'll come back. Maybe. One step. 

_Forgive her._

His leg collapses, pressure on the raw sciatic nerve sending a bolt of bright fire straight into his hip and groin, and he stumbles into the armchair, wheezing like he's been kicked in the balls. 

_Wrong!_ His thigh screams as he pushes himself to the piano bench, and he wants nothing more at the moment than to curl into a ball and yack his insides up until he dies. _Wrong!_ Cameron's wrong. She's always been wrong. Nothing changes, nothing gets fixed. Not him. Not ever. 

(Oh, it would have been easy to let himself fall into her; to slip inside, take everything, wear her skin, drain her dry, and she'd thank him all along the way.) 

Instead, he plugs the empty spaces Stacy left behind with scotch and pills. Every year, muscles shrink, his leg grows more concave. Every year, the holes get bigger. 

(And then he reminds himself that he doesn't like people and people don't like him; it's a mutual not-liking thing.) 

The prescription bottle rattles in his hand. His thumb uncaps the lid; a quick flick of the wrist, to toss it into the air. (object in motion) The pill tumbles like a satellite falling from orbit, spinning end over end before it drops down the hatch. (object at rest) 

The endless pattern. The way it is. The way it's always been. He's been staring at the same walls for five years, sliding further into decay. 

Planets revolve, stars burn out; the world moves on. Everything moves on. It's the law of inertia; objects in motion, stay in motion. 

Objects at rest, stay at rest.

* * *

He considers, for a moment, checking up on Mark Warner (and by proxy, _her_) upstairs, but it's imprinted in his head that whenever he thinks of Stacy, he sees her in the arms of the Guy Who's Not. The guy who likes mountain bikes and kids and who, apparently, can interact with people on a level that's not contentious. Who, when not paranoid and delusional, seems to be a fairly normal, unassuming, definitely non-threatening sort of fellow. Not The One. But the one who's there. 

Shmuck. 

Figuring he's had his fill of self-torture for the day, he instead chooses to linger at the pharmacy, waiting for Jose or Albert or _whatever_ his name is to hook up his refill. 

The clinic is, as always, crowded, sick and sterile smells mixing in the recirculated air. There's a kid who looks like he has strep throat coughing on everyone within lung range. Charming. Another with a pinkie jammed and wiggling furiously in his ear. Wax buildup. Three colicky babies and their anxious mothers. All boring, boring and boring. 

Fingers drum impatiently on the counter. 

(How long does it take to count out thirty-six damn pills anyway?) 

Invariably, his attention wanders back to the clinic patients and he reconsiders finger-in-ear-kid who's digging away like there's no tomorrow. (Jesus. Early settlers didn't mine this hard for gold) He begins wondering if the kid's had any kind of discharge from the ear canal, any partial hearing loss. Otoscopy to reveal if there's any pus in there, plus a TB test, just in case it's tuberculosis of the middle ear. Biopsy might also be necessary to find out if— 

The wiggling stops. The kids pulls out a large, yellow flake, inspecting it like a brand new life form cultured from his brain. 

—Wax buildup. Always go with your first instinct. 

A fully-stocked pill case rattles on the counter, and he snatches it up, thanking the Vicodin gods. His peripheral vision catches the flicker of a white coat floating through the sea of coughing bodies. 

Dr. Cameron looks up at the same time he does and freezes, her right hand in a stranglehold on the handle of her valise. There's familiar hesitation there, the kind of awkwardness that follows embarassing confessions, and it's fighting a war with ingrained good manners. In the end, he does what he always does, watches silently as she nods politely and, with head bowed, slips through the doors. 

(It's at that moment with her head twitching slightly up and down, that he recalls something about Stephen Hawking and a shattering tea cup.) 

She'd done that when he first hired her, that nodding. Too new, too timid to do anything else, especially when she didn't know how to respond to him. It had taken nearly month before she'd worked up enough courage to murmur, "Good night, Dr. House. I'll see you tomorrow." Funny, how he never really noticed until today. 

(The universe and time constantly expanding, imploding. Entropy. Time recalibrating, running backwards. The teacup reassembling itself.) 

The universe fumbling in reverse. 

He pops another two Vicodin and decides to not dwell on it any further.

* * *

The pills don't help. 

Even with opiates bubbling merrily in his bloodstream, there are still too many neurological processes puttering around inside his brain. He's still thinking too much. 

(Too much time alone, he thinks, and you end up in whispered conversations with inanimate objects; you talk to the air, to the walls, yourself. You find yourself waiting for an answer.) 

Which is how he finds himself at some bar too cheap to have real name in some shitty part of town. Get drunk, get lost. Disappear and drown. Sounds good. 

He'd been here once, five years ago. 

The first thing he notices is how things haven't changed since his last visit. Stale smoke in the air, probably the _same_ smoke from 2000. Misfits on the jukebox. His shoes lift from the floor with a sticky, slurping noise. Yep. As always. Filled to the gills with losers, alkies, hicks and whores. Perfect. 

He surrenders his keys to the bartender, anticipating an evening of mindless inebriation, betting on his consciousness to give out before his wallet does. For a while, it looks like he might succeed; downing shot after shot, each successively following another, and another, until he's forgotten how many he's put down and his vision's dimmed to a suitably narrow window. 

Something roughly jars his arm, dumping half the contents of his shotglass onto the bar top, and he turns to see a large mass of flesh roughing up a hooker. 

Ordinarily, he'd ignore it. Not his business. Doesn't care. 

However, his contempt for bullies outweighs his instinct for self-preservaton (or at least to not get the shit kicked out of him), and this one, vaguely hominid, probably _Australopithecus ramidus_, is of the typically big, loud and angry type. Shades of Vogler, only without the window dressing of Armani and a bajillion bucks. 

Maybe it's the alcohol. Maybe it's the Vicodin. Either way, it's made him brave tonight. 

And it's infuriatingly easy to distract the belligerent, ball-scratching ape, goad the hulking pile of bones and meat into taking a swing. Misdirection's what he's best at. Focus frustrations on another object. Give him another target. Trucker-boy doesn't have enough brain cells to rub together to know when he's being redirected. 

The world around him shakes as he feels the impact in his midsection. It's solid. Sharp. The snap of something breaking. And it hurts. Oh, yes, yes it does. He grunts, taking a tottering step back before doubling over. But it fades all too soon. It's not enough. 

He chuckles, gasping. His diaphragm protests as he exhales. Stands up again and taunts some more. Conan, the trucker, delivers. A big, beefy hand connecting knuckles to jaw. 

Yes! Sharp, heady, the bright, painful sting. He knows that intimately. It feels glorious and wretched, the nausea and bile, split lip and loosening teeth. Blood fills his mouth and tastes like gasoline. 

(Monster trucks dance before his eyes, steel and fiberglass and rubber and flames. Grave Digger, crushing all pretenders to the throne in a shower of fire and twisted metal.) 

But it all too quickly it dissipates again. Disappointing. 

Another fist connects with his temple and sets the world spinning. 

(_The Musical Express_ revolving to the never-ending tune of a Color Me Badd song. Some loud, gaudy carnival with expensive junk food and cheap rides. Stacy dragging him into an insta-photo booth, pressing great big smooch on the side of his face as he squinted and made a face at the camera.) 

His fingers tingle, just a little bit. _Respiratory depression_, his mind automatically informs. Brain still clicking on overtime, processing muffled warning klaxons from the rest of his body. 

He needs another. One more. Each hit brings him closer. He thinks he's shouting, but he can't hear. One more. Just one more. 

There's a blanketed crunch as his nose breaks. Breathing slows, becomes heavier. Words slur, tripping over a leaden tongue. 

_More. _

Can't feel. It. Anything. (How does that Pink Floyd song go?) All whittled down to a dull little roar, a pinpoint in his head. Keep going, _he's not done yet_. One. More. 

And then 

The world goes still. 

It's a little bit like dying again. 


	2. 2a

A/N: Whoops. Sorry. Wrong draft.

* * *

2a

* * *

Gravity. It's the only explanation. The undeniable force field of House's giant, bloated head sucking her in like a reluctant satellite. Push. Pull. Drifting in permanent orbit. 

(She tried to escape once; thought she'd succeeded. And then he came knocking around, with that nervous gait and those pleading eyes. He'd muttered, joked, stared. He floundered and she crumbled.) 

Watch Allison spin. 

(Moving objects rotating, revolving, heavenly bodies colliding somewhere, up there.) 

Fingers edge up the incline knob on her treadmill, and she steps up her pace, tries to push uninvited thoughts out of her head. 

She can't remember the last time she collided with another body. Her stint at the Mayo, perhaps. A fifth-year resident with the sweetest smile. He dropped her home after a thirty-six hour rotation, and they made out like teenagers to _Desperado_ on the radio before she pulled him into her bedroom. 

It was nice. He was nice. She used to like nice guys. How she developed a taste for brilliant, fucked-up men, she'll never figure out, but for now she'll blame it on space dementia. 

It explains why she mentally stumbles when he stands too close; how something about his eyes makes her babble nonsense; how he can disassemble her with a look (the way he looks at _her_, the other woman, a look he'll never give her). 

...why she is, apparently, a complete idiot. 

She keeps running, hoping to wear herself out, wear herself down, so she can stop thinking, thinking about him, thinking and running, her feet pounding on a track to nowhere. 

Story of her life, really. 

(Mediocre, she thinks. What she's always been. Allison Cameron, never the best at anything. Not the older, successful sister, nor the beautiful, youngest one. Always the mediator, the one who compromised. The middle child.) 

Here, because her boss has a predilection for playing with broken toys. 

Five, seven, ten miles pass before she realizes the shrill chatter's not coming from her head, but the phone across the room. Lurching off the trainer, she totters forward a single step before protesting muscles give and she collapses to the ground. Gasping, lungs burning, she rolls onto her back, slapping a forearm over her eyes. 

The answering machine finally picks up. 

"Um." It's Chase. There's a pause. A stutter. He clears his throat. 

(Breaths come short and fast. She concentrates on that and bringing her heart rate back down from her MHR redline.) 

Another pause. "Right." And the message ends. 

Seconds later, her pager chirps. 

When she opens her eyes again, she's still staring at the same ceiling.

* * *

Dead air. Chase despises, has a well-developed phobia of it. Too many memories of prayers, heads bowed in silence at the seminary. Whispered last rites. The sacrament of extreme unction. 

_(by His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon you what sins you have committed by sight)_

He grips the spoon tighter, absently stirring it in a half-filled cup of cold coffee, sneaks a glance at Foreman (sullen and cryptic, behind steepled fingers). Then at the clock (eleven thirty-nine). Back at Foreman. A minute later, he drops the spoon in the cup and, with a resigned snort, slouches back against his chair. 

"Forty-six year old male comes into ER with acute respiratory distress," he mutters, hunting for something, anything to focus increasingly fidgety thoughts on. Talking helps. "Tox screens show an abnormally high level of hydrocodone and an alcohol level at one-point-one. Physical inspection reveals contusions to head and torso, possible fractures to the right six and seventh rib. Differential diagnosis?" 

"Sounds like a severe case of chronic dumbassedness," Foreman, still partially walled off behind his hands, supplies. "Lower endoscopy to locate the source of problem." 

"Can't." Almost a smirk there. "His head's in the way." 

"Well, it's obvious, then. Cranium's causing the rectal blockage. Recommend immediate amputation to remove said obstacle." 

"Guys." Wilson, in the doorway, a little sharper than intended. Slouching against the frame, he tries not to look exhausted and worried, and fails miserably on both counts. "What are you doing here?" 

It's Chase who finally relents. "We heard what happened." 

"Besides," comes grudging admission from the neurologist, "House dies and we're _unemployed_." 

Two fingers dig into the collar, loosening the knot at Wilson's neck, as four from the other hand leave fingerprints on the glass door. "CXR showed a large right-sided hemopneumothorax. They're performing a percutaneous tube thoracostomy for costal resection and lung parenchyma suture." 

"So what happened?" Elbows forward on the table, Foreman uncovers and leans in. "He get hit by a truck?" 

"A trucker, actually." 

"What do we do now?" Chase asks, and he smacks himself internally for sounding so pathetic. _Oh, what a rebel without religion he is,_ they'd say. Cock of the walk, with a healthy disdain for authority; watch him refuse to follow in his fathers rheumatic footsteps (even though he surreptitiously wears the same sneakers). 

He's discovering, sickeningly, that he likes being directionless even less, and the vertigo is hitting now. House will figure it out. He always figures it out. He'll come up with the last-minute solution, and he'll do it in the most insulting manner possible. It's what he comes to expect, House and his smug little brain always coming through. 

House is two floors down, being cut, drained and cobbled back together. 

_Per istam sanctam Unctionem_, (he can't speak; his mouth is too clumsy to wrap around the Latin. He used to stutter; he still does, sometimes) _et suam piissimam misericordiam_

"We wait." Foreman. A sigh. Twitching, tapping fingers. In a sudden burst of anger, he stands and kicks over a chair. "That's what we always do." 

_Indulgent tibi Dominus quidquid deliquisti, amen._

* * *


	3. 2b2c

* * *

2b/2c

* * *

Day passes into night, passes into day. Sunrise, sunset; _time marches on_, he'd said. Time marches on. Except— 

She's beginning to believe nothing ever changes. 

It's doubt, the distinct, sadistic twist of déjà -vu creeping into her aching muscles that reminds her: it's all there, all familiar; she's done this before. 

Her hands clutch at her elbows because she doesn't know what else to do with them. Fatigue nips at her calves. She contemplates sitting (sliding down in a boneless puddle against the wall behind her; screaming; throwing something through the safety glass window). However, a comfortable sort of paralysis has settled, quicksand in the marrow of her bones, so she remains as is. 

And there's no comfort in the familiar; she has an inkling of how this will end. (All things lead from order to chaos, but she merely moves from one moment to other; Allison, forever stuck in entropy.) Like always, she's here and he's there. 

On the other side. Partitioned behind inch-thick glass and wire filaments, a jumble of limbs — arms and legs sticking off the sides; each erratic, rapid beep of his heart rate monitor, the watery gurgles of his brand-new chest tube, making the muscles in her jaw flinch. 

Hodges, she recognizes, Smith, Grabinski and a pair of eyes she can't place, working between (twisted, bloody) broken ribs, re-inflating his collapsed lung, meticulously reassembling all those bits and pieces and leftover parts, and despite that, despite everything, all she can think at the moment is _you bastard_. 

How dare he. How dare he self-destruct, fall apart and still claim _fucking superiority_. 

(But) 

Prevarication is one of the things he's best at. (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and House.) And how pretty those lies are, each wrapped in a tidy little bow. How easily he wields verisimilitude like a bludgeon; his shield, his gospel. 

Stay out. Stay away. Don't look too closely. 

It's funny and it's sad and it's pathetic, she knows. She tries, but only ever stumbles, with her big, brave words that he probably hadn't even heard. 

(And if he were awake at this moment) 

How he'd mock her. 

_You still think everything can be explained by a textbook. That if you study hard enough, read enough, all the answers will magically appear. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll even include a nice colored illustration._

Funny, how she'd unashamedly welcome that. 

But all that happens is the door opens, Wilson shuffles in, eyes flickering up to the monitor. His otherwise immaculate shirt is mis-buttoned by a single eyelet all the way down. His tie is missing. Hair attacked from all sides, up, down, left and right, wherever his fingers have recently dragged. She doesn't remark on that, but instead takes a small step to the right as he takes the spot next to her. 

"Any change?" 

Unsteady fibrillation catches in her throat; a giant unswallowed egg. (trips and falls, tumbling over her words; she opts for the monosyllable) 

"No." 

"How are you feeling?" 

She shrugs. Clutches her elbows tighter against her chest. 

"You look tired." (And he looks like hell too.) "If you want to lay down for a while, I can stay and—" 

Negative again. He didn't expect otherwise. 

"We'll just keep standing here, then. They'll eventually find us...in a few weeks...dead from starvation." 

The joke lingers, totters, and falls to its death on his tongue, but he doubts Cameron's even noticed. Not quite listening, not quite there; shoved in some quiet little corner of her head (dead babies, the Lupinos and her silence). 

He wonders if he did her any favor then. 

Seemed like a good idea at the time. 

He unhooks the second button on his shirt, still the stranglehold on his throat. It's the air, Wilson deduces, the antiseptic stench constricting his epiglottis. 

Breathing heavily through his nose, he mentally reviews his schedule tomorrow: three referrals, clinic, the General Tumor Board, more clinic, and review. The numbers on his cell phone lie flat, flush against his fingers as he fiddles with the cover, snapping it open, shut; toys with the idea of calling Julie just to hear her voice. He'll tell her he loves her and he'll be there. And then say he won't be home tonight. Again. 

_Your eternal optimism is one of the charming things about you, Jimmy-boy. A pretty girl smiles. You fall in love. You marry her, thinking: this time, it'll be different; this time, it'll work. You fall out of love. A pretty girl smiles..._

He closes the cover and drops the phone back into his coat pocket. 

Patterns. Pathology. Everything eventually, inevitably, repeats itself. Nothing is random. He's spun in so many directions, so many different-sized circles, fractals and mirrors, his head feels like a Mandelbrot set. 

"Where were you?" Cameron's voice startles the spiders in his brain; he blinks as they skittle back into familiar corners. "The first time," she clarifies, still staring through the glass. Picked up, from the man, the fine and familiar art of conversing without actually looking at people. "He never mentioned you. He would have, if—" 

"If I'd been there?" It comes out louder, harsher than intended, a hollow shout in a room occupied only by that incessant, _goddamn beeping_. Wilson feels her shoulders flinch, the molecules in her body backpedaling, as her mouth begins to formulate an apology. 

(She apologizes, endlessly, for so many things. House's nebbish little wallflower. Too nice, too sensitive, too compassionate for her own good.) 

"You're right. I wasn't there. Chalk it up to my impeccable sense of timing." 

(You fall in love. You get married. Your best friend enters the hospital; leaves two weeks later, a quadricep short.) 

White noise fills Wilson's pocket, his cell phone buzzing a path of voodoo from hip to head; numbers fill up the display, leading the path back to home. Pick up. It's easy. 

(You fall out of love) 

"That's why you're here now. Why you've been there ever since." 

_(How many times are you going to go running when he calls?)_

How many times? Ever since. Sounds like a long time. Feels like forever. 

He watches the blue digital lights flicker a little while longer, the phone obstinately vibrating in his hand, before tucking it away again. 

"Where else am I going to be?"

* * *

At some point in the night, Foreman and Chase also slip in, each alternating positions at the window. Both mutter useless and encouraging things, she thinks; he thinks. It all fuzzes together in an incomprehensible mess. Static and white noise. 

It's not until hours later that it's over. Hodges, turns, pulls his mask down and grins, giving the observation room a hearty thumbs up. There's a ripple, three men sigh, their combined tension slowly dissipating. 

"Just so you know. House—it's going to be...difficult. For the next few days." 

"Because he was _such_ a ray of sunshine before." Foreman almost smiles. Almost. 

"Regular walk in the park," adds in Chase. "In Beirut." 

"You haven't seen anything yet. Don't be surprised when—" Wilson glances over. (Cameron, still at the window, staring out into the emptying operating bay, on some vanishing point in the needles and blood and sponges and tubing; pieces left over on the operating table.) Looks back. "Just be prepared to take a lot of friendly fire. With a few Bouncing Betties thrown in for variety. He's going to say some things he doesn't mean, and a lot of things he does." 

He turns again as the door clicks shut. Just like that, Cameron is gone.

* * *

She's there, of course. Perched among the waiting room chairs, a cup of coffee resting on the seat nearby, she glances up from the paperwork in her lap. Feeling particularly uncharitable, Cameron considers the coward's option of quietly retreating, hiding until she's gone, but it's too late. 

"How did it go?" the ex asks. House's ex. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-love of his life. (It's still a little strange to think of him having an ex-anything. Life before the leg.) 

"Why aren't you with your husband?" Just a little more spite than intended. 

Stacy, however, seems unruffled. "It's a general unspoken rule that only lawyers can answer a question with a question." 

"That wasn't a question just then." 

"Lawyers are also notorious for lying." 

"Lawyers and patients." _Lawyers and patients and doctors and..._

"That's everybody, then, isn't it?" And there's something about Stacy Warner that's painfully clever, and it makes Cameron alternately (unspeakably) jealous and ashamed. 

"He's been moved to ICU," she manages to mutter. "It's going to be touch and go for a few more days." 

There's a nod. A sip of coffee. "Never much for the small gesture, is he?" 

_It's not about you._ (but she suspects that's at least partially untrue) 

"I...did some research. Wanted to see if maybe..." 

"If there could have been another way? If something might have saved his leg? If it could have turned out differently? If I'd just waited. If, if, if, and _if_." 

_It's not about..._

"After four days, debridement wouldn't have been an option, it would have been a necessity." She glances down the hallway. Empty. "The chances of him regaining even partial function of his leg after—" 

"More medical mumbo jumbo. Speak without the obfuscation, Dr. Cameron. In my place, what would you have done?" 

_It's not..._

"As a doctor, I'm obligated to accede to the patient's wishes." 

Where the hell is Wilson? Foreman? Even Chase would be a welcome distraction from this little waiting room torture-park of being relentlessly cross-examined by the constitutional lawyer. 

"You didn't answer the question." 

_It's..._

Cameron wants to laugh. Hysterically. 

(Twenty-one. Him, dying. Her, expected to know. Everything. Books, journals, everything she could get her hands on, she read, studied; he got sicker.) 

"It's not what he wanted." 

"Are you even capable of a straight answer? What. Would. You. Have. Done?" 

"I don't know!" She breathes through the fingers pressed to her mouth. (Missed something, something she should have seen, should have known. Didn't know enough. Never knew enough.) "But it wasn't my decision to make. And it wasn't yours either." 

At last, Stacy seems satisfied. 

"Oh, he certainly has you trained well, hasn't he? Everything right or wrong revolves around the holy word of _Greg_. Just one more question." Features shift subtly, as she asks, "Would you rather be _right_ or _good_?" 

"I think I read this on a Meyers-Brigg personality test once. Are you going to tell me I'm an ISFP now?" 

"Suddenly so defensive. Why is that?" 

"I'm not—" 

"You just crossed your arms." Silence. A sigh. With a rueful shake of the head, the lawyer twists her mouth up into a sharp little edge. "Greg would rather be _right_." 

"He usually is." 

"Yes, he usually is. And that's his biggest lie of all. The truth is, in the end, he got to live." She raises her coffee cup in salute and, behind the smile, Cameron spots all the little hairline fractures. "He got to live and he never has to admit he was ever wrong."

* * *

TBC 


	4. 3

A/N: There's a tempo change in this part, with hyper-compressed moments, flashbacks, flash-forwards and an unreliable narrator running (limping) amok. But, as House himself says, "Time is not a fixed construct."

Many thanks to **treacle_a** for the beta. She like, rules, and stuff.

* * *

3

* * *

He'd died for a minute. Maybe two. 

That was the easy part.

After all, death was death. Was death. Is death.

(heart staggering, stopping; brain sinking into a slush pile of failing neural receptors; ears clinging to vestigial fragments of sound)

It's when he wakes that everything is wrong.

"Hey."

For a brief, sluggish moment, he wonders if he's made an egregious error. There is an afterlife, after all, and he's now doomed to relive his days of the infarction for all of eternity with the Dean of Medicine on permanent rotation.

"Hell of a way to get out of clinic duty, House." Cuddy, attempts a smile, her jaw pulling into an uneasy rictus. It's tired and worn, beaten on the edges.

Something in his throat catches. He blames the endotracheal tube. Eyes slip shut again as he sinks back into the pillow.

* * *

_Rising, waking, pain and screaming and screaming and more morphine, please more morphine, because it burns; it burns, and what the fuck happened-where's the rest of it-where did it go-and staples and stitches staring back, sunken, weeping and raw, and he remembers 'I'm sorry' and only thinks, 'she lied.' _

_She lied, she lied, she lied... _

* * *

Cuddy's always the first to arrive, just as the light breaks. She tries to be quiet, checking his chart, his vitals, reading every single printout with painstaking care, but he always wakes anyway. 

Chase comes in. Sits. Leaves.

Foreman comes in. Sits. Monologues. Leaves.

Wilson checks in twice a day. Lays out all the latest gossip. Ball scores. Anything and everything that's of even peripheral interest.

Cameron doesn't come by.

* * *

He's becoming acutely aware of the shifting, sore muscles in his face, of the two loose premolars in his jaw and the splint traversing his nose. He counts the requisite number of tubes stuck in his body, plus one sticking out near his left armpit. That one's new. Needles in his side and wrists inform him that there are more parts hurting now than before. 

All of which means: more morphine. Click-click, clickety-click.

Aaah.

* * *

_"Greg. Please. Say something." _

* * *

The occasional guest appearance by Stacy involves rueful head-shaking, brushing his hair back, and fondly calling him an idiot. 

He ignores her and pretends to be sleeping.

* * *

The E.T. and chest tubes finally come out, but it's another day before he can actually speak. Even then, the words blunder out sticky and slow. 

"You look like crap." Cuddy's still doing that. The fake smile. It's weird. And annoying.

"Nice to know your bedside manner's gone the way of your blouses." Not up to usual par; he attributes it to the opiates. "At least make yourself useful and go find a cute nurse to come hold my hand."

"I would. Unfortunately, Dr. Cameron's in the clinic right now."

She leaves before he can find something to throw.

* * *

"So," Foreman asks, one afternoon. "What's the other guy look like?" 

"Wasn't looking all that closely." He doesn't care for the way his voice sounds, obnoxiously nasal and muddled; his face itches from the splint. "I could probably describe his fist really well, though."

The neurologist can't help himself from smirking. And really, House doesn't blame him.

"Man, you sound like one of the Balboa brothers," Foreman notes. He also adds, unnecessarily, "The wimpy one."

* * *

There's not much room in his little corner of the hospital for more than his vital monitors, and he's more than okay with that. 

On the nightstand sits a bouquet of flowers with a card he doesn't bother to read.

* * *

He's too old for this, he thinks. Too used to being by himself. Long stretches of company make him uncomfortable. Tired. Grumpy. Naked. 

The sight of Chase standing, stammering, and fidgeting about doesn't help either.

"You're adorable," he coos. "Like a baby mouse with a lobotomy."

* * *

_"Greg?" (liar) "Greg, honey. I had to." (liar) "This was the only way, don't you see?" (liar) _

_Liars go to the eighth circle of hell; traitors to the ninth. On the upside, it'll be a short commute. _

* * *

_"Why?" _

Everybody asks. He entertains himself by coming up with a new one each time.

Today is Stacy's turn.

"I was originally planning to throw myself under a train." His face betrays frustration at his addled brain, mouth staggering around random mental potholes. "But it wasn't due for another three hours. Plus, it was getting kind of cold."

There it is. That smile. She doesn't have a whole lot of those laying around. At least not for him.

"It's probably better that way. Death by Dinky doesn't sound flattering no matter how you spin it."

He'd smile back if his face didn't feel like it would collapse in on itself. Their familiar dance is comforting, even if everything hurts like nothing else. He takes a mental snapshot of her face, this moment, stores it away in a box and hides it where no one else can see.

* * *

"Do you actually work here or do you just wander from room to room?" 

As per usual, Cuddy ignores him.

"Just stopped by to see how you were doing. Judging by your sunny mood, you're recovering nicely."

"And I thought you were only here to check out just how short my gown was. Come on. Admit it. You took a peek when I was out, didn't you?"

"Already saw it." She yawns. "Eight years ago. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt and assume the room was a bit cold at the time."

"Oh, zing."

* * *

"Guess what I managed to get my hands on?" Wilson bounds in, car keys twirling from the ring on his index finger. 

He shoots back a scowl that's mostly feigned. "You better not have put any scratches on her."

"Ha! You're lucky it wasn't stripped and on blocks by the time we got around to it."

"Who is this we, Kemosabe?"

"It's not like I could drive both cars by myself, and since Stacy had a bit of free—"

"Wait. Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait." He is shocked. Mortified. Appalled. And a bunch of other words used to convey extreme dismay. "You let her drive my car?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't see the sign on it that said, 'No girls allowed.' Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a Corvette? Chick magnet?"

"Duh. However, the female does not get behind the wheel. There's a principle involved. She probably used the rearview mirror to put her lipstick on."

* * *

_Percocet and scotch and Darvon and scotch and OxyContin and Dilaudid and Vicodin and scotch. _

_They keep the pain at bay. (He tells her) _

_They keep him quiet. (He tells himself) _

* * *

Sometimes, he'll float to half-awareness at an unreasonable hour, when the lights are low, and halls are dark and empty. He'll feel a hand gripping his, so tightly his fingers start to tingle. And as he scrabbles and flails and strokes through the opiate-induced fog, the grip will lessen, fade and disappear. 

He'll forget by morning.

* * *

"What was it like?" Chase looks away, gesturing vaguely into the air. 

"What's _what_ like? An aneurism? A bar fight? Sex with a woman? Clarify."

The reply is so low, he can barely make out the consonants.

"I thought they taught you about that at the seminary. Extreme unction. All that anointment, wailing and teeth gnashing."

"They say there's...supposed to be a light. The divine."

"...strippers. Beer volcanoes. Sorry. Got distracted. So you're looking for, what...a second opinion?"

"Right."

"Okay."

There's a momentary pause. Chase clears his throat. "So, being dead..."

"Is like being dead."

* * *

The card is from Senator Wright's secretary.

* * *

Cameron still hasn't stopped by. 

Ah, well. There's always TV.

* * *

"Someone has to cover for your slacker ass in the clinic." 

"My ass managed to slack for six years without needing someone to cover for me," he sneers back. "And I didn't ask."

"You didn't have to."

* * *

_In Newtonian mechanics, the universe is a spiral, cycling endlessly between anesthetic bliss, consciousness, and relentless, cold tedium. _

_He spins, hurtles, unstuck, Billy Pilgrim, slipping, sliding, upside down, inside out, tumbling through time, through space, in search of the great...whatever...circling, swirling down the drain like intergalactic refuse. _

* * *

The guard rail was down. 

_ (the universe is a spiral) _

He didn't mean to, but the guard rail was down. Something tears, stitches, tubing, rippling out of his body. He hears something clatter as he falls and falls and—

"Christ," he slurs, wincing at the gorilla-like grip on his arm, as four hands take hold of his extremities. Cameron turns and presses her right shoulder up against his, shoving him up, as a nurse rolls him back into bed. "...crush boulders in your spare time?"

"Hold still," she orders, hands moving briskly over him, checking his arterial, CVP and IV lines.

To his surprise, he does.

* * *

_"You lied to me." _

_"Yes, dammit. Yes, I did. I lied! I lied to save your life." _

* * *

A cough develops. Air seems to be in shorter supply. Head hurts, more than usual. He orders a blood test for WBC and predicts double pneumonia.

* * *

He wakes early, for once. 

"Sit down, Cameron," he says drowsily, before she has a chance to completely slip away. "Just don't...crush my hand like you always do."

* * *

That freakish, glassy smile is gone. Looking down at the clipboard, Cuddy takes a breath, as if she's about to breach some unspoken Maginot Line. 

_Don't_, every one of his hair follicles pleads. Really. All of them.

"Why?"

He's getting so very sick of that question. (She's not supposed to care. He's not supposed to be here again. But, he supposes, he's the one who failed first.)

"Maybe people don't like me in general. Surprising, I know."

"I asked you," she pleads, fumbling with his chart." I asked you if it was all right with you that I hired her back. You could have just said 'No.'"

"Don't you have something to administrate?" he interrupts rudely. "More Angola monsters to slay? Remember, it takes a hundred to make a coat."

Thus endeth the conversation.

* * *

When Chase drops in, he almost tells him about his dad, but he doesn't feel like quite that much of a bastard yet. 

He'll give it one more day.

* * *

"I'm disappointed in you, Jim. You're messing up the rhythm. When I'm in here, you're supposed to be out shopping for wife number...what are you up to now? Four?" 

"As opposed to you, who just assumes it's doomed from the start, so why even bother? You'll be an ass. She'll betray you. It'll all end badly. Woe. Time to take a pill. At least I try."

"Yes, you do. Dr. Wilson ever-dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of marital, or otherwise, bliss. You're right. Lack of effort is the one thing no one can ever accuse you of."

"And it's easier for you to just lay down and die. When was the last time you tried? When was the last time you were happy? When you even liked —no, tolerated— life?"

_ ("I'll race you to the car!") _

"Don't remember. Don't care."

* * *

_"You lied to me." _

_"Everybody lies." _

* * *

A teddy bear. From the Warners. Incredulous, he turns the fuzzy thing over in his hands. Then, laughs and laughs and laughs. 

Right before he chucks it across the room.

* * *

In the evening, when everything's quiet again, he decides to show her. 

"Isn't this what you've always been curious about? What you wanted to see?"

Eyes fix on his leg in morbid fascination, the raised line running from groin to knee. Cameron can envision what they've removed - chunks of _vastus lateralus_ and _medialis_, his _adductor longus_, severely compromised. Most noticeable though, is the indentation where the _rectus femoris_ should be.

There's a laugh, and it's dark and nasty. "Do you fantasize about how if you'd been there, if you'd been one of my doctors, you think you might have saved my leg? When you treated the volleyball player...did you start imagining it was me?"

She doesn't answer, and he knows the stab is deep and precise. He catches her profile, eyelashes and hair and shadows against her stark white lab coat, death-gripping the edges of the sliding door.

"Don't fool yourself," he says. "Don't think I—you'll ever—" And his voice splinters, breaking off into silence.

Words, insinuations, speculation, he's always been so good at that; taking her apart piece by piece, except, unlike all his other toys, he can't quite remember how she fits back together.

"Not everybody," Cameron finally breathes, "Not everybody lies as much as you do."

* * *

_"Everybody lies, Greg. Even you. Especially you." _

* * *

He hates her. For leaving. For coming back. For telling him. 

But mostly, he hates that his memories of Stacy —the good, the bad, the awful, the sublime— are all tainted by the fact that she's now fucking another man.

* * *

She's angry. 

He's said something to piss her off.

Actually, just about everything he says pisses her off nowadays and really, that's fine with him. He prefers it this way.

"I'm sure the one thing you've already read about DVTs are their likeliness of recurrence. Want to bet on what it'll be? My other leg, perhaps; make everything nice and symmetrical. One the other hand, a subclavian will keep everyone guessing for a while. Me, I say go for the big one: pulmonary embolism." And this is when he strikes. "So tell me, Dr. Cameron, does the one-in-three chance of me suddenly dropping dead in the near future bake your cake?"

"Of course it does," she sneers. His bones can feel the effort it takes to keep the tremors out of her voice. "In fact, I'm so turned on right now, I might just draw the blinds and hop right up there with you. Think you're up for one last quickie before you kick off? Maybe I'll even troll Oncology afterwards; I hear it's better than a personals ad."

Oh, but her anger is beautiful; all unbridled fury and incandescent pain. This, this is what he wants. He doesn't need her pity, her compassion, the weepy, useless hand-wringing or whatever she's offering with her soft voice and gentle touches.

This is what he wants. What he needs.

* * *

He's angry. 

Pacing the room, tie loose and askew, shuffling his hands here. There. Gesticulating awkwardly about.

"What the hell did you say to her?"

"Which her? Stacy? Cuddy? Cameron? It's so hard to keep all the abuse straight."

"Does it matter which one? Any of them. All of them." He pauses in his tirade to glower, hands pressed to his hips. "At least Stacy can throw everything you dish out back at you. Cuddy just does the smart thing and ignores you completely."

"And now we come to the crux of the issue. Wonder-boy Wilson riding to the rescue of the poor, defenseless Dr. Cameron. Was it the wobbling lower lip that got you?"

"Every time she comes out of your room—" He begins pacing again. "What did you say?"

"What she needed to hear. What she always needed to hear. Patients don't need friends. They need doctors."

"Do you need a doctor?"

(Wilson. _Hombre. _ Go the fuck away.)

"I sure as hell don't need friends."

* * *

_I love you. _

_I loved you. _

_I can't do this anymore. _

He wonders if the only reason they stayed together so long after was because they knew how to hurt each other too well.

* * *

Chase doesn't stop by. 

Neither does Foreman.

She does.

She really ought to know better.

"He didn't die from the cancer did he? Your husband." Every word that tumbles out now, is a barb; each one flung unerringly. "At that stage his immune system would have been severely compromised. I'm guessing he caught a cold. From a family member. From you."

And then...and then...he can't look at her anymore, not with the way she's watching him. She's always watching him, prying, digging, always looking for something, something that isn't there. Stop looking. Stop trying. There's nothing left.

He turns his head and talks to the wall.

"He got sick and then he died. And somewhere in the back of your head you think, maybe it's your fault. Maybe you killed him, and if it weren't for that little cough, he might've stuck around a little longer. Another week. Another month. He might have even hung on for another year."

Silence. Then, softly. Insidiously. "Poor Dr. Cameron." His voice is a field of hypodermic needles. "Watched her husband die and now does penance by being attracted to hopeless strays."

She lets him have the last word. She always does.

* * *

TBC 


End file.
